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Why are Aliens always Humanoid?


Aquila King

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I'm not asking as a skeptic or a believer, it's just an honest question I have. :unsure:

Nearly all supposed alien sightings have aliens appearing as humanoid. Whether it be the Greys, Reptilians, Tall Whites, etc. I don't necessarily see any reason why intelligent life must take this form. The only physical features I see intelligent needing would be a big brain, and some sort of free appendages in order to create tools and technology. I mean, why aren't there ever any reports of tentacle monsters abducting people or something?

I'm curious to hear people's thoughts.

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Imo is the most efficient form so all evolved life  provably ends up with 2 arms 2 legs  one head and hands to be able to use tools.

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Gene Roddenberry explained this.

"THE SIMILAR WORLDS CONCEPT. Just as the laws of matter and energy make probable other plant's of earth's composition and atmosphere, certain chemical and organic laws make equally probable wide evolution into humanlike creatures and civilizations with points of similarity to our own." In other words, if they come from similar environments, the dominant (and hence most technologically advanced) species is likely to have evolved in a similar fashion to us. 

 

Alternatively, it saved a lot on the effects budget.

Edited by Manfred von Dreidecker
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That's a very good question and the answer might depend on whether or not one thinks real aliens are vsiting us in humanoid form or humans are 'seeing aliens' in some other phenomenological manner due to our cultural beliefs.

Some ufologists in the past have remarked on how much the grey aliens look like human fetuses and even postulated that abduction events could be related to birth imagery.

 

:unsure:

Edited by doctor wu
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Another suggestion of course might be the theory that humans themselves may have originated somewhere outside this planet, and arrived by means of a comet or something (I mean the DNA or whatever, not that proto-humans were like hitching a ride on a comet, that would be silly). That there was some common source of what evolved into humanity out there somewhere, and if it took root here then might it not have done so on similar planets that offered similar environments? 

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38 minutes ago, Aquila King said:

I'm not asking as a skeptic or a believer, it's just an honest question I have. :unsure:

Nearly all supposed alien sightings have aliens appearing as humanoid. Whether it be the Greys, Reptilians, Tall Whites, etc. I don't necessarily see any reason why intelligent life must take this form. The only physical features I see intelligent needing would be a big brain, and some sort of free appendages in order to create tools and technology. I mean, why aren't there ever any reports of tentacle monsters abducting people or something?

I'm curious to hear people's thoughts.

Yeah, why not a head under the right arm? One eye in front and two eyes at back? For that matter, why are all worlds spherical? And where did gravity come from?

 

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 because we tend to have somewhat limited imaginations ?

i can imagine aliens without tool making hands, or even heads.  Some sort of energy beings who can manipulate physical energy/matter.

or ones that exist in pure energy with no need of "physical" anything?

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Because we pull our own ideas of aliens from our psyche and project them outward. 

Incidentally, if you read enough Lovecraft, your aliens might be tentacle monsters. 

Edited by ChaosRose
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8 minutes ago, lightly said:

 because we tend to have somewhat limited imaginations ?

i can imagine aliens without tool making hands, or even heads.  Some sort of energy beings who can manipulate physical energy/matter.

or ones that exist in pure energy with no need of "physical" anything?

The thing is though, that it would be a whole lot more difficult for disembodied intelligences, or beings that live in a quite different environment, say capable of living on gas giants for instance, to develop a technological civilization - even if they had the intelligence to devise the principles of interstellar travel, say, it would be much more difficult to obtain the materials and construct the technology that would make it possible. Plus, if they're visiting here, they'd be much more likely to be from a similar environment (as Roddenberry said). They might be curious from a purely intellectual or scientific point of view about a completely different environment, of course, as we would about Jupiter, but no one's ever likely to consider it feasible to actually visit Jupiter in person. And that's why we're concentrating on visiting Mars rather than Venus, since Mars is a whole lot more hospitable for us, relatively speaking. 

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15 minutes ago, lightly said:

 because we tend to have somewhat limited imaginations ?

i can imagine aliens without tool making hands, or even heads.  Some sort of energy beings who can manipulate physical energy/matter.

or ones that exist in pure energy with no need of "physical" anything?

You type like I do. That's funny. 

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looking at the most intelligent species on Earth - dolphins, elephants, crows, dogs, homonids, etc - they show quite a variety of appearence. Add in octupuses and it gets even more varied.

What we do all share is a common ancestor, and evolution on a planet with a specific size/gravity, and chemicial and atmospheric composition, orbiting a star with specifu outpits of radiation.  

Its unlikely every world in the universe on which complex life evolves will be identical to Earth.    Therefore it is unlikely any intelligent lfe that might appear on such worlds would be quite the same as any on Earth.

40ft tall crows with 4 arms as well as wings, or 4" tall elephants with a double trunk, who breathe methane, or 5 limbed land "octupuses", are as likely as homonid forms.  When you add the possibility of silicon based lifeforms, we start getting real weird ....

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If it is actual alien technology that is being encountered, it would most likely be a drone. The vast majority of our exploratory vehicles are remotely controlled, this would hold true for aliens' as well. If this alien technology were here to study us, then perhaps these "grey men" are simply automatons which carry out the studies and the aliens have made them humanoid in some sort of attempt to minimize apprehension in their subjects by giving them a familiar type of shape and appearance (as opposed something which might appear more like the aliens themselves, but literally scare the subjects to death).

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4 minutes ago, Essan said:

looking at the most intelligent species on Earth - dolphins, elephants, crows, dogs, homonids, etc - they show quite a variety of appearence. Add in octupuses and it gets even more varied.

What we do all share is a common ancestor, and evolution on a planet with a specific size/gravity, and chemicial and atmospheric composition, orbiting a star with specifu outpits of radiation.  

Its unlikely every world in the universe on which complex life evolves will be identical to Earth.    Therefore it is unlikely any intelligent lfe that might appear on such worlds would be quite the same as any on Earth.

40ft tall crows with 4 arms as well as wings, or 4" tall elephants with a double trunk, who breathe methane, or 5 limbed land "octupuses", are as likely as homonid forms.  When you add the possibility of silicon based lifeforms, we start getting real weird ....

But humanoids have the overwhelming advantage of language (and opposable thumbs). This may well be the same on other worlds on which similar varieties of lifeforms have evolved. (Remember, we're talking about  lifeforms capable of developing spaceflight here.) And probably the reason dolphins have never ousted humanoids is because of the difficulty, as mentioned above, of being able to construct a technological civilization. 

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3 minutes ago, Manfred von Dreidecker said:

But humanoids have the overwhelming advantage of language (and opposable thumbs). This may well be the same on other worlds on which similar varieties of lifeforms have evolved. (Remember, we're talking about  lifeforms capable of developing spaceflight here.) And probably the reason dolphins have never ousted humanoids is because of the difficulty, as mentioned above, of being able to construct a technological civilization. 

Yeah, I keep telling my cat to grow those things so she can scoop her own litter box and pitch in around here. 

Freeloaders, all of them. 

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3 minutes ago, Alaric said:

If it is actual alien technology that is being encountered, it would most likely be a drone. The vast majority of our exploratory vehicles are remotely controlled, this would hold true for aliens' as well.

That's just what I've often said. I think that would account for a lot of UFO sightings, and would answer the objection people always raise that "manned craft couldn't possibly do the things they do". Perhaps, following this line of thought, the "ETs" that people claim to see are just a kind of projection into people's minds or a holographic projection or something to give them a means of keeping some sort of grasp on what they're seeing - a kind of user interface or virtual assistant. Like Cortina or whatever it's called.

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Another interesting thing (to me, anyway) is that aliens are always described as roughly on the same scale as us.

I mean... Why can't there be 3inch or 40foot aliens?

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2 minutes ago, Lilly said:

Oh no...if cats evolve thumbs we're all doomed...they will conquer the world if that happens!

Point taken.

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Ugh...I have to go back to the Derailers Anonymous thread now. 

*swats own hand*

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We like to be scared and nothing is scarier to us than another human who looks a bit different.  From another tribe!  Here to steal our beer jobs and women!

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1 minute ago, acute said:

Another interesting thing (to me, anyway) is that aliens are always described as roughly on the same scale as us.

I mean... Why can't there be 3inch or 40foot aliens?

I think gravity is the determining factor there. Anything too big would collapse on itself, and as for the tiny aliens, well, that happened once. Sad really, as Douglas Adams relates:

Quote

For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across—which happened to be the Earth—where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog. 

 

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The simple and most HONEST answer is....that reports of UFO's and aliens gained momentum with the advent of early TV and early sci-fi TV shows.....which nearly ALWAYS showed aliens humanoid (because humans were under the makeup).... this then put the idea of what aliens must look like to those who eventually had the story ahem, personal experiences of alien contact

First grey-ish aliens with large heads...were in Star Trek....co incidence huh?

trekcage3.jpg

http://www.nexusroute.co.uk/archives/55007

229341_1241125719861_full.jpg?v=12411271

 

Edited by seeder
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2 minutes ago, seeder said:

First grey-ish aliens with large heads...were in Star Trek....co incidence huh?

I think long before that (albeit in green.)

Image result

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early Outer Limits series, and their aliens....Perhaps people reported aliens were grey because TV was in black and white in those days  :lol:

 

 

outerlimits_os_05.jpg

6826429_orig.png

http://www.dvdjournal.com/reviews/o/outerlimits_os.shtml

 

 

Edited by seeder
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8 minutes ago, Eldorado said:

We like to be scared and nothing is scarier to us than another human who looks a bit different.  From another tribe!  Here to steal our beer jobs and women!

This could explain why they are grey and unformed, but basically human like... if they tried to make them too human, they would fail to cross the "uncanny valley"... nothing scares us more than something that is almost human, but not quite.

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